PEACH

Large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR)

Scotiabank Net Zero Research Fund

Thank you to Scotiabank for supporting Canadian and international academic institutions, including the University of Calgary, who have been granted $100,000 to assess marine carbon dioxide reduction approaches, focusing on development, risk assessment and pilot planning for a new technology that can store carbon as bicarbonate in the ocean. The two-year project aims to build an integrated system that can safely change near-surface seawater chemistry to promote natural uptake of CO2 in the ocean as bicarbonate while maintaining viable biospheres in the marine environment.

News release 2021 Recipients
Scotiabank Climate Commitment Support the PEACH project

In the Press

This is very timely given recent discussions at COP26 and the USDOE announcements on Earthshots and CDR

The big picture

Team

Team

Clockwise from top left: Venkataraman Thangadurai (Chemist), Arthi Gopalakrishnan (Electrochemist), Anna-Maria Hubert (Lawyer), Md Kibria (Engineer), Steve Larter (Geologist), Renzo Correa Silva (Geochemist), Prathap Suba (Electrochemist), Ben Tutolo (Ocean Chemistry)

The team has diverse skills and origins but is committed to “research, develop, and if appropriate, test and deploy socially desirable solutions for large scale carbon dioxide removal”, especially ones that safely amplify natural geochemical processes of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.  Such projects are not merely technical in nature but crucially also have to be acceptable to society, so policy and governance and finance are as critical a part of design and construction as science and engineering.

Societal Readiness level (SRL) is perhaps even more important than technical readiness level (TRL).

Carbon capture and storage

  • CO2 injectivity behaviour under non-isothermal conditions – Field observations and assessments from the Quest CCS operation (read more)

  • Effects of temperature and CO2/Brine cycles on CO2 drainage endpoint phase mobility – implications for CO2 injectivity in deep saline aquifers (read more)

  • Mechanistic insights into sulfur rich oil formation, relevant to geological carbon storage routes. A study using (+) APPI FTICR-MS analysis (read more)

  • The dating of petroleum fluid residence time in subsurface reservoirs. Part 1: A radiolysis-based geochemical toolbox (read more)

  • Fluid Flow, Pore Pressure, Wettability, and Leakage in Mudstone Cap Rocks (read more)

 

Direct routes to zero emission hydrogen or electricity from oil and gas fields

  • Prathap Iyapazham Vaigunda Suba, Arthi Gopalakrishnan, Jagoš R. Radović, Benjamin M. Tutolo, Stephen Larter, Kunal Karan and Venkataraman Thangadurai, Electrochemical ocean alkalinity enhancement using a calcium ion battery, International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control (under review), 2023.
     
  • Life in the slow lane; biogeochemistry of biodegraded petroleum containing reservoirs and implications for energy recovery and carbon management (read more)

  • Can fossil fuel energy be recovered and used without any CO2 emissions to the atmosphere? (read more)

  • Alternate routes to sustainable energy recovery from fossil fuels reservoirs. Part 1. Investigation of high-temperature reactions between sulfur oxy anions and crude oil (read more)

Beyond fossil fuels: carbon free routes to hydrogen and electricity

  • An auxiliary electrode mediated membrane-free redox electrochemical cell for energy storage (read more)

  • Seawater electrolysis for hydrogen production: a solution looking for a problem? (read more)

  • Sunlight-Driven Biomass Photorefinery for Coproduction of Sustainable Hydrogen and Value-Added Biochemicals (read more)